Friday Follies #231 – Making Grammar Great Again, One Hyphen at a Time

Look out! It’s an apostrophe catastrophe!*

  1. Filmmaker’s Nerenberg and Sheehan take a look at the climate crisis like nobody has before.
  2.  It’s safe to say that there’s enough evidence to show that the cassowary has certainly descended from dinosaurs! As the Southern Cassowary only dwells in the tropical rainforest, this further adds to it’s prehistoric nature.
  3. Thank’s for taking the trouble to write such a coherent list without his personal attributes.

 

 

And the corrections:

  1. This boo-boo was perpetrated by a local weekly rag newspaper. Bad enough it was there, but it was in large bold type in a headline. 😬 The subjects of the sentence are two people named Nerenberg and Sheehan. They are both filmmakers, plural. There is no need for an apostrophe there! The only times you put an apostrophe before an “s” are: 1) when a singular noun is possessive, e.g. Nerenberg’s film. Sheehan’s car; or 2) when the apostrophe indicates a contraction of “is”: She’s going out. Ellie’s going crazy. It’s enough. So to show a simple plural, it should just say: Filmmakers Nerenberg and Sheehan take a look…
  2. These two sentences made my teeth clench! The “It’s” that begins the first sentence is correct, since it’s a contraction of it is. But in the second sentence, it’s wrong, since here it’s not a contraction of it is. Instead, it is the possessive pronoun, its: its prehistoric nature. Note that none of the possessive pronouns containing an “s” take an apostrophe: yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.
  3. Another apostrophe absurdity! The writer, for some silly reason, inserted an apostrophe in “thanks.” Why? Only his/her own whirling brain can know for sure. See correction #1, above. It should be: Thanks for taking the trouble…

The Grammar Cop need’s a res’t becau’se s’hes s’o t’ired no’w. ‘Til next time! Please stay well and safe!

*apostrophe catastrophe – wonderful phrase coined by my talented fellow blogger, Magick Mermaid.

 

4 thoughts on “Friday Follies #231 – Making Grammar Great Again, One Hyphen at a Time

  1. 1-Too bad the writer didn’t take a look at a grammar book before causing a crisis with that headline.
    2-That loud groaning you just heard came from Jurassic Park. Even the dinos are aghast!
    3-I’ll thank that writer to stop writing right now! 😀

    Many thanks for the mention! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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